“I will take care of your money and divorce problems. Make them go away. Not as a loan, but a gift.”
My body sagged with relief.
“Oh, God. Cillian, thank you so—”
“Let me finish,” he hissed, his voice cracking through the air like a whip. “I never let a good crisis go to waste, and yours might be very beneficial for me. You won’t have to pay me because your form of compensation will be on the unconventional side. You are going to be my wife. You will marry me, Persephone Penrose. Smile for the cameras for me. Attend charity events on my behalf. And give me children. As many as needed until I have a son. Be it one, three, or six.”
“Anything!” I cried out, rushing to accept his offer before his words sank in. “I would love to—”
Wait, what?
For a long moment, I simply stared at him. I was trying to decide whether he was making some elaborate joke on my behalf.
Somehow, I didn’t think he was. For one thing, Cillian Fitzpatrick did not possess a sense of humor. If humor met him in a dark alley, it would shrivel into itself and explode into a cloud of squeaking bats. For another, more than he was cruel, Kill was terrifyingly pragmatic. He wouldn’t waste his precious time on pranking me.
“You want me to marry you?” I repeated dumbly.
His face was resigned and solemn. He offered me a curt nod.
Holy hell, he wasn’t kidding. The man of my dreams wanted to wed me. To take me as a wife.
There was only one possible answer for that.
“No.” I pushed him away. “Not in a million years. No, nope, nien, niet.” I was rummaging through my memory for other languages to refuse him in. “No,” I said again. “The last one was in Spanish, not English.”
“Elaborate,” he demanded.
“We can’t marry. We don’t love each other.” I tilted my chin up defiantly. “And yes, I know love is so very working class.”
“Middle class,” he corrected. “The happy, dumb medium is comfortable enough not to care, and stupid enough not to aim higher. Working and upper classes always take financial matters into consideration. May I remind you the last time you married for love,” he said the word as you would say herpes, “it ended with a massive debt, a runaway husband, and death threats? Love is overrated, not to mention fickle. It comes and goes. You can’t build a foundation on it. Mutual interests and alliance are a different story.”
But here was the really pathetic part—I didn’t want to marry him precisely because a part of me did love him.
Putting my happiness in his hands was the dumbest idea I’d ever have.
No matter how much I tried to ignore it, Kill was my first real crush. My first obsession. My unfulfilled wish. He would always hold a piece of my heart, and I didn’t want to think of all the ways he was going to abuse it if we were together.
Plus, marrying Boston’s most notorious villain was a bad idea, and I was pretty sure I’d filled my quota of asshole husbands for this century.
“Look, how about a compromise?” I smiled brightly. “I can date you. Be your girlfriend. Hang on your arm and take a good picture. We’ll have a little arrangement.”
He stared at me with open amusement.
“You think your company is worth a hundred thousand dollars?”
“You’re offering me a hundred grand to become your live-in escort and bear your children. Plural. If I were a surrogate, I’d get that same amount of money for one baby,” I burst out.
“Go be a surrogate.” He shrugged.
“It’s a long procedure. I don’t have enough time.”
“You don’t seem to have enough brain, either.” He tapped my temple, frowning as if wondering how much was inside that head of mine. “Take my offer. It’s your only way out.”
I pushed him away.
“You’re a bastard.”
He smiled impatiently. “You knew that when you offered yourself to me very willingly all those years ago.”
He remembered.
He remembered, and for some reason, that completely defused me.
Auntie Tilda, what the hell have you done?
“Look.” I shook my head, trying to think straight. “How about we start dating and I—”
“No,” he cut me off dryly. “Marriage or nothing.”
“You don’t even like me!”
Cillian glanced at that chunky watch of his, losing patience.
“What does liking you have to do with marrying you?”
“Everything! It has everything to do with it! How do you expect us to get along?”
“I don’t,” he said flatly. “You’ll have your house. I’ll have mine. You will be stunningly rich, live on Billionaires’ Row, and become one of New England’s most envied socialites. You’ll be far enough away from me to do whatever the hell you’d like. I am sensible, fair, and realistic. As long as you give me heirs, give me exclusivity throughout our child-producing years, and stay out of tabloids, you shouldn’t see much of me beyond the first few years of our marriage. But no divorce,” he warned, raising a finger. “It’s tacky, bad for business, and shows you’re a quitter. I’m no quitter.”